Craig Copeland, the mayor of Cold Lake, can’t understand why a lot of Canadian politicians are unmoved through the devastation of Alberta oil centres like his own.
‘I’m done’: Alberta’s laid-off oil workers forced to abandon industry in worst downturn they’ve ever seen
Alberta lost 19,600 jobs this past year – the most since 1982 and many industry veterans are deciding they can no more take the boom and bust roller-coaster. Read on
Located in northeastern Alberta around the idyllic lake that inspired its name, Cold Lake is among Alberta’s largest oilsands hubs. It sits on top of many of the sweet spots from the Athabasca deposits and is surrounded by a cluster of steam-assisted gravity drainage operations by oil majors such as Imperial Oil Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc., Husky Energy Inc., Devon Energy Corp. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.
Together, they produce up to 500,000 barrels a day, making it one of Canada’s top value-creating communities. You will not look for a prouder one.
Cold Lake is also a big Canadian Air Force town and also the home of its fighter pilot training program, nevertheless its young population has been hard hit through the postponement of a long list of oilsands projects during the past year as companies roll back investment to deal with the oil price collapse.
Those projects were said to be the sector’s future because they use more complex technology than traditional mining operations do. Instead, they fell as hard because the cost of oil. Copeland estimates 1,000 out of the 5,000 people working directly in the oil industry are unemployed within the 40,000-resident Lakeland area, but that does not include the indirect job losses.
There would be a time in 2012/2014 whenever you couldn’t get a room in Cold Lake. Now parking lots are vacant
Businesses that offer services to grease companies – many of them owned by the area’s large aboriginal population – are hurting. Construction workers from across Canada are now being told to go home. Restaurants and hotels still empty.
According to StatsCan, the unemployment rate in Wood Buffalo/Cold Lake, where most oilsands projects are based, shot up to nine percent in January, from 8.6 per cent in December and 5.4 percent last year. Before that, any talk about labour was about shortages.
“There is really a noticeable quietness,” Copeland said. “There would be a amount of time in 2012/2014 whenever you couldn’t obtain a room in Cold Lake. Now parking lots are vacant and you can begin to see the difference.”
The blows started coming using the crash in oil prices orchestrated by Saudi Arabia at the end of 2014 to claw back market share from higher-cost producers in the usa and Canada.
Today, Copeland worries more about the long term. The oilsands’ growth story has lost traction due to insufficient pipeline capacity and climate-change policy – and that is a Produced in Canada problem.
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Without market access and the right business conditions, oilsands production could freeze at current levels, he said, and thus would the exploration work, construction projects, support services, and retail, transportation and hospitality jobs that fueled the area’s – and Canada’s – economy.
We have allowed misinformation to dictate the agenda in Alberta
“That conversation isn’t discussed enough,” he said. “And it’s all linked to the pipes. There needs to be a market for your oil to visit.”
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Pipelines to Canada’s West and East Coasts, and to the U.S. Gulf Coast, have stalled. The Alberta government is focusing on implementing a 100-megatonne-a-year cap on greenhouse-gas emissions for the oilsands industry, up from about 70 today.
Such a cap would restrain many planned projects. The us government, meanwhile, is focusing on its very own plan, and is reforming energy regulation to include a climate-change test on pipelines and the oil projects that feed them.
Copeland’s harshest criticism is perfect for the environmental movement, that they said has never bothered to discover more on the practices of the oil industry in the area, preferring instead to blindly organize protests when it did go.
Anybody that has been to oil facilities can easily see their minimal land disturbance, their preoccupation with following regulations, their anxiety about harming environmental surroundings, he explained.
“We keep beating our oil industry having a stick, and no-one wants to fully stand up and say, ‘Enough is sufficient. Environmentalists, pack up your bags and deal with your own neighbourhoods,'” said Copeland, with a background in fish and wildlife management and runs the Cold Lake Fish Hatchery.
“We have allowed misinformation, and guys like Neil Young and David Suzuki, to dictate the agenda in Alberta. We have got to get it back, and also the only way is perfect for federal and provincial politicians to say, ‘We are building pipe. Let’s go.'”
A lack of growth does not mean production will be shut in. Oilsands operations continues to produce, just like they have through the downturn, because investments have already been made. It means Canada continues to get a large amount of its oil from unsavoury regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, rather than hard-working towns like Cold Lake.
According to a labour demand outlook report made public now by Petroleum Labour Market Information, Canada’s oilsands sector is shifting from growth and expansion to increasing the reliability and performance of current operations.
It projects interest in onsite construction workers is going to be 92-per-cent lower by 2018 – representing nearly 20,000 fewer jobs – when compared with 2014 projections. Operations jobs are likely to increase modestly, to about 35,000 in 2018, but that’s still thousands short of previous expectations.
Cold Lake grew from an influx of largely young workers from all over Canada, lured by high-paying oil jobs and great recreation facilities funded by oil companies. Many bought homes, started families and intended to stay in the future – eight percent of their human population is four years old or younger.
Copeland notes his counterparts in Quebec and British Columbia who criticize pipelines aren’t talking about why many of the young, unable to get jobs at home, gone to live in his community for work. The last big project built nearby, Imperial’s Nabiye, employed 1,500 construction workers, he explained. Of those, 90 percent were tradesmen from across Canada, including big groups from Quebec and Vancouver Island.
It’s unlikely, he points out, that newer industries for example technology will relocate to meet the increasing demand if the oil patch dries up. “If we allow the environmentalists win, where do these young people go for work?” he asks.
ccattaneo@nationalpost.com
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